Travelogue 47: Happy Holidays and a Camino Tease

Hello Loved Family and Friends!

Greetings from Punta del Diablo, Uruguay.

 New Year, new look:

My dear friend, Yoli, who is a gifted human beauty artist said, “Sit down in the chair and forget all of your past notions about what you think is an acceptable look for you. I’ve got a vision and it’s going to get you out of your box.” 

“I trust you 100%,” I said. “I’m ready for a change. Have at.” 

Four hours later she let me look in the mirror. Once my jaw muscles had regained function, I said, “Holy shit! I look fabulous!” 

That was yesterday.  I am as happy as I look in the photo.

One month ago I wrote to you from gate A3 of the Phoenix airport the following start of a promised travelogue about my experience on the Camino:

                                                                                                                      November 23, 2013

I sit returning the gawk of a three-month-old baby with what looks like a hot pink Loofah sponge the size of a grapefruit pegged to her temple. It is held in place by an elastic sweatband wide as any professional tennis player’s brow.  Poor thing. She is struggling enough as it is to keep her head from snapping right off. She is at that age. Now she’s got an obnoxious blob of chiffon thrown into the balancing act. Mom used to attach that extraneous, foo foo shit to me and I hated it. I’d pull it off within the hour, until she started affixing it with such fervor that we had to cut it out of my hair when she was ready for a ribbon change. My heart hurts for the little one before me. 

Anyway, enough random writing… Today is a travel day for work and I’ve done enough trips to Cuba now that I don’t have to spend it prepping, so I’ll see if I can whip out a report on the last two months.  I’m feeling fatigued, though, and a bit scattered, for several reasons, but if I start obsessing over cohesiveness, this will never get written. So, in the words of the dread-locked, West Coast yoga instructor I took a class with yesterday, “Thanks for flowing with me to the end, eh?” 

I’ve been scattered since last Tuesday when the invite to an all day audition in person for Adventures By Disney appeared in my inbox. The original date they gave me, Dec 5, at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, coincided with a coveted trip to Cuba (“Open and Courageous, Living the Values” has paid off, others are getting bumped to accommodate my behind on the schedule—yes! cha-ching!), so I had to go to the West Coast interview in California on Nov 20, which gave me less than a week’s notice to make a decision, make travel arrangements and prepare. Make a decision? Was there any question about accepting this invitation? Yes. Unlike Grand Circle, Disney does not pay for any of the expenses incurred to interview with them. Given that I was in Uruguay when I got the invitation, acceptance assumed a hefty investment of time and money.  

I don’t know. Something came over me. I was star struck and felt possessed. Out of over 1,100 applicants, I made it to the final few. Since I’m still in the initial stages of a new career, it seemed a prudent move. I went into autopilot and next thing I knew I was in Los Angles. That’s very much like how it happened with the Camino. I felt called to go and then, there I was. The between is a blur.

The whole interview process was nerve-racking. Before arriving, I had to make a video of myself giving a mock orientation meeting for one of the Disney trip itineraries. That required great extensions of unconditional self-acceptance and loving kindness toward myself, because I get all squirmy when I see me on film (especially pre-new look). 

At the interview I had to stand up in front of my fellow candidates and six Disney executives to give a 2 minute introduction of myself and answer an impromptu question.  Out of a list of 40 thought provoking prompts, I got the dud: “Tell us about your most embarrassing moment.” I went blank. I’m trying to eliminate shame from my repertoire of emotions. I’ve worked hard to not have embarrassing moments swimming at the surface of my psyche. I made up some clichéd bullshit about coming out of the bathroom with the back of my mini-skirt tucked into my panty hose and a two foot band of t.p. tagging along behind the high heel it was skewered on. Then I confessed to that being a big fat lie, because you are more likely to see a nun in a mini-skirt and heels than you are me.  So, I told an anticlimactic anecdote from my 8^th year, when I missed the cue that Dad had hushed the crowd to say the Christmas Eve dinner blessing and I blurted out to my cousin across the silenced room, “Hey Ronnie!! I hope Santa brings me a shotgun!”  That uneventful story provoked polite chuckles from my competitors, more to show off for the judges their social sensitivity to a floundering act on the stage than any authentic sign of amusement. 

The afternoon session was even more grueling. We “speed dated” the executives, spending three minutes with each one, role playing situations like, “One of your guests comes to you and points out that the local guide said it was OK for them to feed and pet the wild animals after you had said it was forbidden…What do you say to this guest and the local guide?”   

To the guest: “I don’t recommend feeding or petting the animals, but feel free, if you’ve had a rabies vaccine or don’t mind 20 injections in the belIy.”

To the local guide: “You dumb fuck , ignorant goo-lute, don’t you know that 1. most of the shit we eat isn’t fit for human consumption, much less animal intake 2. if we feed the animals they form a dependence on us and eventually become a nuisance 3. it endangers every being present, because if you give a Snickers to one monkey and not another, someone is going to lose a limb??????”

That’s what I thought, but didn’t say. 

But really, what stressed me out as much as the actual audition was FINDING SOMETHING TO WEAR. First of all, I H-A-T-E shopping. Second, I suffer from childhood mall trauma. Third, I live out of a suitcase. Do you really think I’m going to cart around, country to country, two pounds of fancy business wear that takes up six square inches of prime case space on the chance that I might need it? No. So, at 8:59 pm the night before the interview, my friend, Monica, and I are STILL in JC Penny, ignoring last register call, trying to find me some duds worthy of Disney. When they started flipping off the lights, out of desperation, I threw up on the counter a pair of black slacks, four inches too long, and a snazzy green blouse, one size too big. I hide the material overages best I could safety pins and a blazer and went on with the show.

 Anyway, the Disney Who-Ha’s said they will let us know yeah or nay at the end of December…which, according to my calendar, officially began three days ago.   

The more immediate reason I’m scattered is the piecemeal itinerary Travelocity rigged up to get me from one coast to the other on a last minute budget tix. Four connecting flights and a six hour layover don’t make for a well-rested Gigi. I spent last night in the Phoenix airport bedded down like a homeless person in the only corner I could find where there wasn’t a t.v. monitor blaring Drama, Doom and Destruction. I’d just experienced those 3 D’s, in 3 D (i.e. live), two hours before at the L.A. airport. Is it odd of me to feel disturbed by a swarm of helicopters circling the airport and four of seven terminals under lockdown?  I have to ask for a reality check, because things of this nature seem to be increasingly the norm here in the U.S., which is part of the reason I spend less and less time here. The “emergency” turned out to be a false alarm. A car smashed into a pole, backfired and it was mistaken for a gunshot. Of course, the whole thing was a knee-jerk reaction due to the real shooting last week. 

I feel like I am circling the Camino experience searching for an entry point from which to tell the story... 

Back to now, December 19, 2013. I continue to circle the Camino experience and apologize for it, because so many of you have expressed an interest in hearing about it. I wrote in my Pre-travelogue 47 note to you that I feel changed on an existential level and that continues to ring true, increasingly so. Something has shifted. If cornered to give “something” a name, I would call it self-empowerment.  Speaking of which, you know what? I’m going to make an executive decision right this second to let go of the guilt and simply ask for an extension. Do you mind? I want to write about my Camino experience. It is profound and, if shared, could serve others. The deal is, though, it’s looking to be an absolutely gorgeous day here in Punta del Diablo (sunny, 85F) and I want to be out in it, not tied to a computer.  I’ve already got Skype meetings with my current manager and the director of another organization that has offered me work in Cuba starting in February (cha-ching!). Then I’ve got to get ready to go camping with Yoli and my tent hasn’t seen the light of day since I moved out of the bush in 2011 (remember?). I would feel better if I sent this as is and saved for another day the Camino experience. Cool?

Thanking you in advance for the choral response of “Cool!” coming from many corners of the Earth and wishing you mountains of merry and heaps of happy for the holiday season.

As always, with much love,  G

Here are some pics

View of rising moon off deck of my new living arrangement. Check out my new set of wheels, too.

Inside

Playing translator and nurse during my first trip to a Cuban hospital.

Picture one of my clients from last trip drew for me as a gift. 

Travelogue 46, Spain: The Skinny on the Camino

I´ve stepped off the walking path a few days to visit a friend and have access to a real, 10 finger keyboard, so I thought I´d take advantage of the luxury and send a few lines. It occurred to me after I sent the last travelogue that you are probably more interested in what life is like on the Camino de Santiago than you are the blister on my toe or how an uptight French woman impacts my bodily functions. I didn´t give you much of a context for either.  For a textbook sort of overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_St._James.  And/or you can check out the movie The Way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5VZKWcgw6c   

In addition, I offer my 2 cents worth here:  The skinny of it is, I walk between 11-15 miles everyday with a 20lb pack on my back. It usually takes me about eight hours because I´m making it a point not to rush. That hasn´t been easy given that so many people are doing the Camino now that I sometimes feel like a cow in a herd of eighty at feeding time. Beds are first come, first served at the next destination. So, far I´ve always found a place to take me in....and the high season is over...I can´t imagine what it´s like in July when Europe is on vacation. 

A typical day goes like this: around 6 a.m. I hear the first riser stirring through his bag and then a headlamp pierces the darkness in our comunal sleeping area. Depending on how loud the snoring chorus was that night and thus, my degree of feeling rested, I either try to go back to sleep or join the early riser in packing up. No matter what, everybody has to be out of the albergue (hostel) by 8 a.m.  Before heading out of town, I stop for a cafe con leche and lookover the guidebook´s description of the hike  ahead. Then I duck in a store for lunch and snack supplies. 

   

Some days there are mountains to climb and others it's flat. Somedays we walk sideline to a roaring highway and some we are insolated by Nature in magical forests. We had 3 days of fog and rain at the start while coming out of France, then a week of sun, and now more rain. The mornings are cool, but by 2pm, if there is sun, it is intense and it gets into the 90s. Most of the crowd has arrived to the next albergue by that hour and misses the heat. I drag in 2 hours later, baked, because I dilly dally in cafes along the way or soak my feet in a stream or smell all the roses along the road. Oh, the wild blackberries are ripe, so I do a lot of stopping to get a belly full. 

The rest of the day  once I get to an albergue goes like this:  Shower, tend to blisters, wash out clothes, socialize, find wifi, check email, dinner, bed. Lights out at 10 pm sharp. The albergue doors are locked and if you aren't in, too bad. It impresses me how seriously people take walking this thing. 

I'd say for most, the lifestlye on the Camino takes one out of comfy
zones. First of all, there is carrying THE pack, which forces you down to the bare essentials and I do mean bare. Only two sets of clothes--the one you are wearing and the one you will put on while you wash the one you are wearing. In all the albergues there are boxes of stuff people realized they could live without and didn't want to carry anymore. It's like a mini-thrift store, which of course, tempts the daylights out of me since I´m a thrift addict, but the ache in my feet keeps me from sucumbing. Just yesterday I left behind gum and pantiliners to lighten my load. 

Then there are the living conditions--if you've got issues with modesty, hygiene or personal space, you will suffer--many (not all) albergues have coed bathrooms, coed dorm rooms of 12-130 bunk beds and shared everything. I am so proud of myself in this area and see much personal growth over the last two decades in myself. "Stuff" just doesn´t bother me like it used to and the reward is a variety of rich experiences to add to my collection. 

There is no set pace anyone has to walk, so groups tend to form and disband daily. 

As far as the inner journey, everyday I set an intention to walk with:  

Day 1:  Clarity for walking the Camino

Day 2: surrender

Day 3:  prayer

Day 4: faith in flow and impermanence

Day 5: manuvering the darkness

Day 6: my relationship with food

Day 7: loving my body

Day 8: mindfulness

Day 9:  Relationship with my brother

Day 10: Envisioning 

Day 11: enoughness

for examples...

The idea has caught on amongst my group of friends and we check in with each other about how our intentions are going. I like the camaraderie. 

I think this is the most boring piece of writing I have produced since I wrote my master's thesis on The Unbearable Lightness of Being in grad school, but anyway...  Many have expressed envy at my opportunity to do this, so there is probably interest in the nuts and bolts. 

I would love to add pictures, but I'd have to figure out how without my laptop and don't want to invest the time. There are people to meet and blackberries to feast...so I´m off.

As always, I love hearing from you. 

All the best, g

PS  The 40 minute interview with Adventures by Disney went great, I think. I showed up authentically, which is the best I can do. I won´t know anything until the end of November, so please superglue at least two fingers in a crossed position for me. I´d really love to get on with them.

Tralelogue 45, Spain: My Feet F!!! N!!! Hurt

MY!!!!!!!!!

FEET!!!!!!!

F!

N!

HUUUURRRTTT!!!!!!!,

but besides that I'm damn near estatic... high on life, in the groove, flowing, aligned with my divine design...you know, happy.  That's what hiking in a Spanish speaking country with a completeable goal every day does for me. An upcoming job interview with Adventures by Disney has magnified it a hair or two as well. 

It will be a week tomorrow that my feet hit the Camino, so it seems a good time to send an update. Truth is, I'm a bit laid up for the day and confined to my bunk with an operated-on blister on my pinkie toe.  It's my own doing.  I tried to pull a Pop and do an unsterile field dressing on it and the damn thing got infected. The Spaniards I was sharing a room with gasped when they saw me suck on a safety pin to sterilize it and then puncture the watery sack on my foot. "!Estas loca!" they shouted offering up a lighter to heat the needle a little too late.  

I can tell you exactly where I got the idea to shortcut hygiene.  When my brothers and I were out hunting and fishing with Pop and we got wounded, he would open up his pocket knife, wipe the blade on his pants and dig out the fish hook barb, b.b. or whatever with nary a drop of disinfectant. We never got gangrene or lost an appendage to amputation. 

Back to blisters. I've since learned that standard blister procedure here in Spain is to sew a piece of thread into the bubble and leave it there until the dead skin sloughs off. As I write, I have a piece of white string strung through the most tenderest part of my pinkie toe thanks to an angel in my path.  Early afternoon  today I hobbled into the healing hands of Dona Carmen who not only doctored my toe, but set my little attitude straight while she was at it. You would be embarrassed for me if you saw what a whimpy, whiney, wailing baby I was while she had my foot on the operating table, i.e in her lap. But ,dang,what do you expect? The Compeed I put on the blister as a bandage had become one with the half-alive dead skin covering the raw flesh and when she started into pulling, and eventually cutting, that off, it smarted, but good. She was very patient with my wincing and whaa whaa-ing, until she busted out a syringe big enough to administer a lethal injection to a full grown beaver and I went hysterical. I started cursing and squirming and damn near flipped over the kitchen chair I was sitting in.

"You know" she says, "there is a whole lot worse suffering in the world than this. Have you thought about that? This is but a silly blister. You are not really suffering. I understand your discomfort, but it's not cancer"

She was right and I apologized profusely for the cursing and the show I had put on that had the whole hostel's attention.  

Anyway, I'm using my toe-sew operation as an excuse to stay inmobile and write this t-logue, which is sure to give me a big fat blister on my thumb from typing it out on my iphone. I hope Dona Carmen is an early riser. 

It will take until Christmas for me to tell all the tales that have accumulated on the Camino this first week, but we will start at the very beginning anyway. 

Day 0:  Inthe Pamplona bus station Cafe I spot at a neighboring  table a woman I assume to be a fellow pilgrim, cluing in on 1. a backpack 1/2 her size in the chair across from her and 2. she was reading what looked to be the same guide book I have. I wrote in my journal that she looked tired and worried and I wondered if I was giving off the same vib. About that time an older gentleman, also with a backpack, asks her in English if she is doing the Camino. Affirmative. He asks me the same question and invites me to join them. 

 Fast forward 4 hours. My new friends, Bridget from Minnesota and Hue from Canada, and I have arrived in St Jean Port de Pie, France and need a place to spend the night. At the pilgrams' office, the man who registers Bridget and me recommends a house right next door where we can share a double room for $24.  Perfect, we think...wrongly.

Interjection of lesson #1:  much to my surprise French is absolutely nothing like Spanish. When I go to Brazil I get by just fine because Portuguese and Spanish are so similar. No go with fran-cee.  The only thing I understood of what Madame Fruitcake, (as Bridget and I later dubbed the landlady of the house) was trying to tell us in our orientation to HER space was via mimes and her palatable unwelcoming attitude. 

I should have known she was too high strung when I took my boots off  and placed them under the bench in the foyer as instructed with about an inch of them sticking out and she takes her foot and pushes them forward until the heels are exactly plum with the edge of the seat...and then shoots me a look of, you inconsiderate slob, were you raised in a barn.?

Once in the room where we were to sleep, I set my pack on the floor and that SETS HER totally off. She yanks it up by the hiking poles I have stuffed in a side pocket as if it was a toddler dressed in Sunday best found sitting in a mud puddle. She slams him, I mean it, in a nearby chair to think about his/its transgression. It's not just any chair he/it has been sentenced to, which is precisely why I choose the floor when my first instinct was to set my pack some place off the ground...like that chair. Obviously an antique, the intricate carvings and red velvet says to me that some royal ass has likely rested there somewhere along the line. 

My thought is, "what is wrong with you lady? Do you know where that pack has been? Have you any idea of the grime on its behind? It's ten times dirtier than this floor. " 

Whatever. It's her furniture. 

She does not let go of the poles and now shakes them as if this toddler pack has talked back to her and she is going to teach him/it a lesson. Mind you, all of this is narrated in a nonstop flurry of loud French neither Bridget nor I can make heads nor tails of. 

She gives up on getting the poles out, points down at the floor and mimics a mad cross country skier hell-bent-for-leather on seriously flat land.  The fervor in her French says to me she is not making small talk about hobbies. She stops that motion, presses her palms together and places them under her tilted head. When she points at her watch, wags her finger in our faces and does the skiers' jig again I get it. 

"Wee! wee! Don't stomp our poles in the morning!" I shout excitedly as if it were the tie breaking point in a million dollar game of charades. Madame Fruitcake is not amused. Bridget thinks it's funny. 

The madame performed several other hilariously anal acts before and after our do's and don'ts orientation,  but I'm skipping the story to our departure the next morning before the blister on my thumb pops and blurs the screen. 

I come downstairs for breakfast before 7, as instructed, and without even a "Bon Jour" Madame goes ballistic. What this time, I wonder, trying to figure out why she is beating on her back and then mine when I know it ain't no pep talk for the road she is delivering. She points back upstairs, pats her back, wags her finger, then blocks the entrance to the kitchen with a Mr. Clean stance. 

I get it. No pack, no breakfast. She doesn't want me to go back to my room before I leave. "But I want to brush my teeth after I eat," I protest, baring my pearly whites and mocking a brush. The teeth, honestly, were of secondary importance. What I really wanted was to have a nice relaxed poo before heading off to climb a mountain for 8 hours in a cool rain with 100+ strangers. 

She could give a rat's patooty about what I want.  I went for my pack and didn't poop for the next 3 days. The end, until I regain thumb flexibility. 

My  phone interview with Adventures By Disney is on Oct 2 @ 12pm EST.   Put it on your calendar to send good vibs that they will love me as much as the world does Mickey. 

Much love and buen camino, g

Travelogue 44: Back at the Ranch, Off to Spain

Well, I'm back! A stay at High Hope returned me to feeling like spunky G1, the free spirited philosopher wander woman who traipses about looking for adventure.  Depressive  Episode # 162 is boxed, labeled and put on the shelf with all the others. They do feel that bookended and identifiable. I came up with 162 using this formula: I'm almost 44, I started having them in my early teens and I average 3-5 a year. Anyway, glad it's over, glad I shared the rawness of it with you and glad to be moving on. I'm also very glad that some of you chose to share your personal struggles or those of a loved one with me.  I honor your openness and trust. 

There is a side note I want to throw in here about the internal conflict talking about the darknesses causes me. Beyond the shame issue there is the law of attraction, which I began studying and practicing about four years ago. I do believe it true that what you put your attention on (i.e. talk about) expands and draws similarly vibrating energy to it. At times I have resisted writing/talking about my depressions for fear of giving them energy. Yet, They are very real and to pretend that they don't exist would be like an alcoholic denying he has a drinking problem. I'm concluding that what matters is HOW I talk about them... In what light, with what intention.  More to come on that subject.

This may be the shortest 'logue I've ever written because I have to tap it out on my iphone and my thumbs and eyeballs have had a sack full already. I have almost a complete travelogue on my laptop, but I'll be without it for the next 36 days. I'm off to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. Considering that I'll be wearing my backpack 5-8 hrs a day and it should weigh 10% of my body weight (=10lbs) only the absolutely essential is going with me.  At the ticket counter, Ole Bluetick, as I lovingly call my pack, came in at 16.5 lbs, without food or water.  Woops!

Why am I tromping off to do the Camino? I can't tell you beyond I feel called and I have the time. The flights, the arrangements, the packing and the prepping have happened on autopilot. "Is this for work?" I'm asked frequently. Everything I do is for work in some way, if I choose to see it as such, because I'm sure to meet someone with connections or have some experience that will eventually lead to income. Hell, I might end up designing and leading spiritual pilgrimages  on the Camino.

Some of you will recall that in 2011 when I went to see Marta (ex g-friend) before heading off to Uruguay, I did 3 days on the Camino and knew I would be back. The first morning of that walk I serendipidously met a Uruguayan woman and within a few hours we were sure that our souls had walked many a mile together in other lifetimes. She lives in Bilboa with her husband and I've decided to go see here before heading to the start of the Camino in St Jean, France. Another calling heeded. 

About midway I'm jumping off the trail to visit the Spanish friend Who owns the cabana in Uruguay I stayed in last year. By that time I'll be ready for the pampering she is sure to give me. 

Here's a draft of an itinerary that will have me walking 21-30 kms a day. 

I have to check email every few days because of the upcoming Cuba trip and the big, fat exciting tour that one of the bazillion companies I have applied to is going to offer me. So, I'll try to send updates along the way. 

And I will look forward to your messages. 

Much love y hasta pronto, g

Travelogue 43, High Hope Ranch, TX: The Truth Behind the Truest Travelogue I've Ever Written

                                                                               September 4, 2013

I said I would show up. So, here I am, showed up, but I can’t feel my face. And I like totally highjacked some stranger’s shopping cart in Trader Joe’s yesterday.  It’s a bit of a blur, but a sketched out memory of the event would have me standing on the chip isle, absolutely put-out and anxious over NO Pirate’s Bootie on the shelves. I finished off my friend’s bag and despite her saying a zillion times, “Eat whatever you want in the house and don’t worry about getting more!”, I feel like my integrity will disintegrate into dust, if I take without giving. So, I’m scouring the shelves, incredulous that T.J.’s does not carry the best cheese puffs ever…then all goes blank… next thing I know I’m staring at lettuce in the cooler. I feel a little loopy, like everything is in slow motion and electrode patches on my brain are zapping it with a constant buzz of numb. I’m spaced, but I’ve got enough wits about me to know that the pack of tortilini tucked between the leafy greens does not belong there. I think, “I’m going to buy that just to save somebody the trouble of putting it back where it belongs! It’s the right thing to do!” Then all goes fuzzy until a male voice says, “This is my cart!”, in response, apparently, to me tossing items into his and yanking off with it as if it were a trailer hooked behind me.  

I turn around and a professor-looking man is gawking at me. 

I would like to smile, but my face muscles aren’t cooperating. “Oh, right, yeah, sorry,” I say letting go of the front of his cart and walking off.

“Aren’t you going to take your stuff?” he calls after me.

“Stuff? What stuff?” I think, but don’t say. Either my face bore the stupor I was experiencing or I started picking up random items, because he says, “These things are mine…those things are yours,” as if he were correcting a kindergartener raking all of the crayons into her pile.  

“Oh, sorry, I’m kinda out of it,” I admit apologetically and go looking for my cart, which is three aisles over blocking access to the bread stand. 

This incident is a very good sign! It means the meds are kicking in, which means the deep black hole that had sucked me into its bowels is filling up with wet concrete and will set soon. I’ll stop feeling much of anything shortly, except jittery. I don’t like feeling that way, but if I have to choose between that or wanting to stick my head in a bucket of water to drown the thoughts and pain, I pick the jitters.  

Some of my closer friends responded to travelogue #41 with, “Are you taking your meds?” Now that I’ve got my feet back under me, I’ll tell you the truth about what  happened before I wrote the truest travelogue I’ve ever written. 

Back in April, a week before checking into the rehab in Uruguay that I wrote about in # 34, I swore off alcohol for two reasons: 1) as an experiment to see if I would have a depression when not drinking 2) assuming that there is a correlation, to show Whateveritwantstobecalled (with whom I have reconciled, by the way, for telling it to fuck off) that I am doing everything in my power to prevent them. I cruised along so smoothly for two months that in June I decided to try another experiment: go off one of my meds. Before you start pelting me with questions like, “What did you do that for!?!", take the time to read a chapter I wrote over a year ago from the book I kept saying I was going to finish and never did. The book dream has worn me down and I’m letting it go, whatever that may come to mean.

Chapter # ?

“To Med or Not to Med….Is That Your Question, Too?”

            I’d be lying if I said I don’t still dream of getting off meds.  I’d much rather spend that $150 a month on travel, camping equipment or chocolate.  In my case, though, if I didn’t take meds, I wouldn’t have my shit together enough to organize a trip, much less enjoy it. My resistance to taking antidepressants isn’t just the money. It’s the stigma, the side effects and the dependency.

With dependency, if you come from a family where substance abuse is the pink elephant in the living room, and you are the one who steps up to put her on contraceptives, when doctors and psychologists start offering pills as a solution to your pain, a loud “whoooo mule” comes up from the gut. I promised myself early on that I would not follow in my mother’s footsteps and addiction would not be one of my issues, including prescription drugs.

I remember the first time a doctor suggested I take an antidepressant. I was 28-years-old and just returned to the States after living in Ecuador for two years, where I had my first affair with a married woman (the first of three).  I fell in love with my host “mother,” a stay-at-home mom with three young kids and a husband who worked on the opposite end of the country and visited every third weekend. Between those visits she snuck into my bedroom every night after the kids went to bed. I say I fell in love, but what I actually fell into was addiction. Woops, didn’t I just say in the previous paragraph that I vowed not to have any addictions?  Sure fooled myself with that one. We tend to think of addictions as limited to substances or behaviors like sex, shopping and gambling, but there are other, intangible ones too, like the pursuit of rejection and an attachment to suffering. Neibe was just one of a long list of women whose affection was never enough to placate the endless ache for someone to make me feel approved of and loved.

I was on the market for a mom, as I had fired my own for drinking on the job and absenteeism. Had she been as worried about excelling as a primary caregiver as she was about excelling in her career, I’d be living the retired life in a cabaña on a beach somewhere with all the money I would have saved on therapy. Woops again, I am living in a cabaña on the beach and am my own boss, despite (or probably thanks to) the thousands I’ve spent on therapy. I suppose there we have a lesson in no excuses, moving past the blame and taking responsibly for your own happiness. I’ll take credit for that. Anyway, that’s another chapter. On with the story of the first time I took meds and what lead me to it.

After a year of clandestine passion in a doomed relationship, I returned to the States promising to lay the groundwork to bring to fruition the fantasy my Mommy/ Lover and I had concocted. She was going to leave the husband, bundle up the kids and come to the good ‘ole U.S. of A to live in a treehouse in my backyard. (I’m not kidding!) More proximate accommodations might lead the neighbors to suspect we were in a gay relationship. That half-baked fruitcake of a plan fell through, and feeling abandoned, I plunged into a deep, deep depression.

       In addition to that ailment, Ecuadorian amoebas had sneaked into my digestive tract, breezed through customs and then multiplied like rabbits in my guts.  I went to the doctor to get the diarrhea under control and he asked a lot of unrelated questions, and somehow I ended up confessing that I felt depressed and was having flashes of scenes where I was being dismembered by machinery.  He was concerned and asked if I had any suicidal thoughts. I answered yes, that I’ve had them since I was a teenager. He sent me home with a recommendation to see a psychiatrist, and with two prescriptions, one for the amoebas and another for Zoloft.  From the doctor’s office I went straight to the pharmacy to fill the script for a diarrhea stopper. The one for the depression, on the other hand, was stuck in a drawer with the excuse that I didn’t have enough money for it. It stayed tucked away for almost a year until my cousin, who was the only one I told about the dark periods, sent me $20 and a letter saying love yourself enough to at least try meds.

I took them for a month, felt better and decided I didn’t need them. It didn’t occur to me that the reason I felt better was because I was taking them. It seems like you’d have to be a little dense to miss the connection, but ask around and see how many people have done the same thing, especially bipolars.  So, for the next 10 years I cycled through depression after depression, and each time they grew in intensity.

In 2000 the longest relationship I had ever had (a whopping year and a half) ended and I had a total breakdown. I remember making a fire in the little chimenea we had in the pagoda in the backyard, staring into the flames and drinking wine until I couldn’t walk. The girlfriend and I were still living together and she found me after dark trying to cat crawl back to the house. She put me in bed and slept beside me all night to make sure I didn’t stop breathing or take the bottle of sleeping pills my PCP had given me for insomnia. A few days later when I got home from work, she was in the driveway with the car running.  I knew where we were going and didn’t resist. I got in and sobbed all the way to the psych ward emergency room. I had made the same trip with my mother thirteen years before, but in the back of a police car, because she had tried to shoot herself and we had her arrested.

My ex had set up an appointment with a psychiatrist for the next week, but knew I needed professional help ASAP. She had battled with depression herself for many years, was taking meds and knew they could help pull me out of this.  She was right. The attending doctor gave me some samples and released me since I wouldn’t be at home alone. By the next week I was clearly climbing out of the hole and eventually leveled off.

 Between then and now, I’ve been on meds more than off. Early on, however, I would get cocky, go through all the rationalizations for why I didn’t need them and stop taking them. Every time I ended up back in my therapist’s office with my face buried in my hands. She would suspect and ask upfront if I had stopped taking them. I didn’t lie. About five or six years ago I signed a pact with her that I would not go off my meds, unless under the supervision of a doctor. I have been true to my word. That’s not to say, that I haven’t split pills, or  nibbled off an edge and called it close enough to try to get the dosage down to near nothing without breaking my promise. Never worked.

As for the side effects, it’s a relief to have no libido when you are not in a relationship, but a major issue when you are. Prozac and Zoloft suppressed my desire so much, that it took a village (meaning porn, vibrators, toys and phallic produce from the fridge all performing in unison) to bring me to an orgasm, and even then it was such a blip on the screen that it wasn’t worth the effort. Sex was one of the rationalizations I gave for stopping meds. I remember one day in my therapist’s office when I could barely keep my head up, she said, “It’s a simple choice, G. Don’t take meds, have a sex drive and keep feeling like this, or take meds, learn to deal with a diminished libido and feel normal. Sex isn’t limited to orgasms. You can enjoy fulfilling physical intimacy without them.”  I don’t know that I ever came to totally agree, but when Wellbutrin showed up on the market, it wasn’t an issue anymore, and so, there went that excuse.

This same therapist helped me through the stigma issue as well. I have this expectation of myself that I shouldn’t need meds and if I could just fix my messed up head I could get off them. Bottom line is needing them makes me feel weak, but even worse than that is the fear that if others find out I take them, they will think I’m crazy. Or, they will say it’s a question of willpower. I’m just feeling sorry for myself and looking for excuses; if I wanted to, I could snap out of it and wham!--be happy.  It ain’t that easy…not even close. 

During one of my I-want-off-these-meds!!! tantrums, Jodi G. (my former therapist) asked:  If you had diabetes, would you take insulin? If someone you love had high blood pressure, would you think less of them for taking medicine to treat it?   You’d probably be angry with them if they didn’t. So what’s the difference?

“I’ll tell you what the difference is, sister,” my little spunky self thought back, “Blood sugar test strips and B.P. cuffs. That’s the difference.” Those illnesses have measurable symptoms. Physical evidence can prove their existence and severity. With depression all you’ve got is a long face and someone’s word.  You can’t send a vial of “I feel like shit” off to the lab and get back results

determining that either A) the patient is suffering from a hell of a hangover and needs two aspirin, a plate of huevos rancheros and a big glass of water, or B) that the person is understating signs of suicidal ideation and needs immediate assistance.

I’ve noticed that I have the habit in therapy of automatically rejecting new ideas and possibilities. Perhaps it’s the need to be right, or subconsciously wanting to stay stuck in suffering. Either way, I hear what the therapist says and store it in my memory, but at that moment I deconstruct it to smithereens, or I acknowledge its validity but say it doesn’t apply to me. And then days, weeks, months and sometimes years later something clicks and I remember it and recognize it as dead on. Such was the case of Jodi’s analogy.

 For now, I’ve resigned myself to forking out the money to keep the one-week-at-a-time pillbox stocked, and to continuing the arduous journey toward not giving a rat’s ass about what other people think. That achievement, really, would take care of most of my problems. I should add before closing that my surrender to meds is not etched in stone.

That brings us back to this June when I consulted with a P.A. in VA to get help with a taper plan. (As promised!) I followed it to a T and took the last dose of Lamictal on August 12. On August 24 I wrote in my diary, "For the sake of my medical records, I document that I am having depression symptoms--lack of self-confidence, feeling of purposelessness, and most tellingly, a black, lead hood waiting for me on the bedside when I open my eyes." 

Before it's declared that the med reduction is to blame, I've some more confessing to do...next time. 

I’ve had a sack full of people emailing me that they composed a lengthy comment only for it to disappear when they hit submit. Here’s what you have to do:

First, if you are on your phone, there is an extra step. Go all the way to the bottom, past where it gives you the option to comment and click on “view web version”. That makes it as if you are on a regular computer. Hit “post a comment.” Write what you want in the box, if you want people to know who you are, put your name at the end of the comment. THEN when it says, “choose an identity” pick "anonymous" and click “publish your comment.” BIG FAT PAIN IN THE ASS,I know, but that’s the only way I can get it to work. I do hope you will put forth the effort, because the ONLY reason I didn’t crawl in a hole and die after #41 is your responses back to me. They are also the ONLY reason I keep showing up to tell more truth. Several people said, “you’ve made me feel understood,” and that, sisters and brothers, makes the torture of vulnerability worth the while. 

Much love,